


A Long Distance Sort of Feeling

by IAmWhelmed



Category: Paranatural (Webcomic)
Genre: Fluff, Implied Romance, M/M, Mutually Missing Each Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 14:31:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7805488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmWhelmed/pseuds/IAmWhelmed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After leaving Mayview to train under a spectral master who can better help him control his abilities, Isaac begins to feel homesick- for the city, for the club, but especially Max. A few hundred miles away, Max is feeling just as lost without him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just a Little Longer

**Author's Note:**

> Originally a warm-up one-shot meant to stay on tumblr, but I liked it a lot so I'm sharing it here too.

A call from Max wasn’t exactly a common occurrence. Most of the time, Isaac was the one placing calls, albeit in small (he tried to shoot for monthly) quantities. He didn’t want to seem desperate, after all, even if he really was.

Leaving Mayview to train at a dojo outside the city, leaving everyone he’d ever known behind, it was hard and he often times regretted it. Sometimes he wanted to sit down on a creaky wooden floor and talk to Doorman for a few hours- catch up and ask questions he knew his new master wouldn’t answer. He longed for the familiarity of dust in his eyes and the smell of morning dew with just a hint of finely cut grass.

He wanted to see the sun rise in Mayview again, from behind high hills and in the horizon, something that’d always been a comfort to him when he still called that city home. He wanted to sit down in art class and paint a creation he’d hate come the next week. He even found himself reminiscing about the bad things- the way Isabel and Max would tease him, Ed’s annoying random observations, Spender’s general aloofness as a spectral teacher...

More than anything, and he hated himself for it, he missed Max. He missed Max and he desperately, with vehemence, wished to see him face-to-face again. When his mind wondered, he found it dwindling on the coattails of that desire, and sometimes he could almost feel his arms wrapped around Max’s torso. Sometimes he squeezed his own shirt just to pretend it was Max’s he was feeling in his fisted hands.

“Something wrong?”

“What? No!” Max’s voice on the other end seemed affronted, perhaps perturbed. “Why would you think that?”

“No- it’s just- you calling me instead of me calling you, it’s weird is all.”

There was a beat of silence on the other line, before he heard Max exhale. “Right...”

He knew Max wasn’t feeling the same way. He didn’t seem the type to dwell too long on other people. Max had his family, his scooter, friends... Their relationship was so different on either end, and sometimes it almost felt one-sided. Of course, Isaac reminded himself, it was one-sided. It always was. It was stupid to hope for it, wish for it, because wrapping his arms around Max would get him nothing but a witty one-liner and a “No, seriously dude, let go”.

Isaac leaned the chair he sat in far enough to almost hit the ball behind him, but his gaze was somewhere out the window, where the sun was setting behind tall trees and sleeping birds. His feet were on the table, ankles crossed. It wasn’t a typical habit of his, but missing home left him more lethargic and- maybe just a little- lazy. There were other people in the room, but other students so rarely interacted with him towards the end of the day, far too tired from hours of physical labor and mental training to hold much of a conversation. Isaac himself was running purely on adrenaline, misplaced excitement at hearing Max’s voice on the other line. “How are things at home?” One of the older students, sitting across from him with a mug filled to the rim with coffee at her lips, gazed up at him with a raised eyebrow. He shrugged.

“Fine, I guess.” That was a bummer. Isaac had his fingers crossed something interesting had happened. “Same spirits, same prose nuggets, you know the gist.”

Isaac hummed and let his head fall against the window. “Cool.”

He knew Max would never say it, but he wanted to hear it. He wanted to know, just for a moment, that Max wanted him to come home as badly as he wanted to be there. He sighed and switched his crossed ankles. “Is there a reason you called?” That sounded accusatory- like he was upset Max had made the call first. The opposite was true, but he just couldn’t help but to think there had to be a reason. Max wouldn’t call him on a whim- somebody else maybe, but not him.

“No, not really just...” Max trailed off, and Isaac could hear him sigh again.

For a moment, Isaac contemplated sharing his thoughts with Max, explaining how he wanted to be home, be with him, hug him and call him to talk for hours every night. He mentally slapped his own metaphorical wrist. “Max?”

“Just, um, when are you coming back?”

Isaac blinked, then worried his lips and turned his nervous gaze to his lap where his other hand sat idle. “Uh, I’m not sure. Training is getting pretty heavy here and all...” He swallowed. “Why?”

There was a familiar sound of shuffling on the other line, and then another heavy breath of air. “No, it’s just- summer vacation is coming up, you know? I was just...” Max groaned and there was an audible sound of a body against pillows and bed-sheets. “I was wondering when you were coming home.” Isaac opened his mouth to respond, but his breath hitched when Max added, in a very low voice “We- I- well, maybe I miss you?”

He would have fallen out of his chair had its back not hit the wall. “Oh- um- right... yeah!” He swallowed again. “I’ll ask Master tomorrow and shoot you a text.”

“Call me.”

His entire face was hot, then, and he sat up straight in his chair and held the phone to his ear in his other hand. “Y-yeah. I’ll call you. I’ll let you know.”

“Cool...”

“So,” Isaac thought he might’ve giggled, but that was definitely something Max would have pointed out and teased him mercilessly for, right? “I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

There was another shuffle, and a creek of a bed. Max sounded irritated, but he could still hear the smile in Max’s voice. “You better.”


	2. Saudade

It started off distant, like a small twinge of dull pain in the center of his chest. Max didn’t pay much mind to it; he had other things to worry about, like surviving the near-daily brushes with death by various aggressive spirits.

Isaac was gone- he knew that. He wasn’t dead or anything like that, but Max knew they wouldn’t be seeing the guy for a pretty long time. As Spender described it, training to control one’s abilities, the process of learning from a specific spectral and calling them ‘master’- it all meant Isaac was training for real, becoming a real certifiable agent of the spectral world. Training for something like that, Spender said, took years.

It’d only been a shallow two months when that dull ache got bigger and deeper, like a black hole sucking at his insides. Max had ignored it ‘till then, focusing on his schoolwork and club missions and getting to know PJ. The daily routine worked well enough as a distraction, but by the end of Day 60, Max was ready to eat his own heart out. The few calls Isaac made did a little to help, but the distance between each call left him feeling teased and cheated each time he heard the tell-tale buzzing of a dead line. He tried to hang up first, but he never did.

He was starting to miss Isaac’s groaning and grunting, the sound of him huffing when he got upset because Max had overstepped and touched a nerve. It was all he wanted, really, to reach out and loom over Isaac with a joke and a mocking smile. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew he missed Isaac- he’d missed him all along. It was just easier to pretend he didn’t, because the ability to cut that distance if he really, really wanted to kept his chest constraining. He couldn’t just tell himself there was no fixing it, that there was no seeing him. Isaac wasn’t dead- he was in a city only a hundred miles away and he was just out of his reach and it stung like heck.

_“No, I was just... I was wondering when you were coming home?”_

Home. To Mayview. To Max.

He didn’t know when he’d started thinking of Isaac the same way he thought of a pet dog or a family portrait, but the city didn’t feel like home without him. The small street lights he’d slowly become accustomed to seemed foreign again, and the Convenience Store below him felt smaller without Isaac standing there with Ed and Isabel, scowling and rolling his eyes like he’d rather be anywhere else. It was like Max had picked everything up and moved to a new town all over again- and he hated, despised, stressed over being plucked from his freshly-settled roots. Max was home. Home was Max. He wanted to know when Isaac would be back, because the dull pain was starting to get a little worse.

Standing there, across the field as Isaac took his first steps off the Ghost Train and into Mayview, Max felt relief. The pain had traded itself for excitement- anticipation. After a long glance around, Isaac’s eyes finally met his own. The club approached him as a whole, but Isaac was in his arms before Isabel or Ed or Spender could get a word out. Max hadn’t made the move, but he was abundantly thankful Isaac had. He could feel Isaac’s hand, squeezing the shirt over his back as he pulled him closer, face buried in the nape of Max’s neck. “Aw, what?” He snickered. “Did ya miss me?”

He let his own hands fall from Isaac’s shoulders, down the length of his back until he came to his waist and squeezed him there. Isaac was holding him so close his lungs were burning, but it still didn’t quite feel close enough. Max leaned his head against Isaac’s, reluctantly letting the smile on his face grow as wide as his chest felt. He had no way of knowing if he’d hidden it well, and he had a feeling he didn’t, but he wrapped his arms around Isaac’s waist and pulled him closer.

“Yeah,” Isaac breathed “yeah, I missed you a lot.”

_Isaac..._ Max exhaled, but it came out as a laugh. He should have said something witty, something about how Isaac was only back for the summer, but he just didn’t have the grit in him. Not right then, not with a mouth-full of Isaac’s hair in his face- not with the overwhelming urge to press his lips against his head and leave them there.

Even if it was just for a little while, Isaac was home.


End file.
